Weekly Music Workshop Schedule 2013-2014

Lines In The Sand: Antonio Sanchez In Conversation with CJ Shearn

Antonio Sanchez has been one of the leading lights of the drum scene for 20 years, having made his debut with Danilo Perez and in 2001 joining current employer, Pat Metheny. Sanchez has made his mark as a composer having won a Golden Globe for the score to the Alejandro ... more

Vic Juris

Vic Juris has been one of the top guitarists on the scene for decades. Truly a guitarists’ guitarist, he paid his dues playing with such notables as saxophonist Dave Liebman, and organist Don Patterson. Juris was born in Jersey City, NJ, and for Christmas in 1964 he got ... more

Small Group Jazz Performances: Part VII

The time period of 1945-1965 contains four distinct stylistic shifts– bebop, cool jazz, hard bop and the free jazz styles that include literally hundreds of noteworthy performances. Choosing prime examples from what has been recorded is always a difficult task, but here is ... more

New York Jazz Workshop Open House

New York Jazz Workshop Open House Foster your passions and hone in your skills in the world capital of jazz To celebrate its new location at the esteemed Michiko Studios at 149 W 46th St. within mere steps of Times Square, the New York Jazz Workshop School of Music (NYJW) will ... more

Gary Burton’s Improv Class

Take a two-hour class, recorded at Loyola University, with vibraphonist extraordinaire and Berklee teacher Gary Burton. You’ll also hear us three Loyola combos and Gary’s thoughtful comments about group playing (which begins about 1:14). admin more

Modern Jazz

Hi everybody! Time to share some music. We had a great class last night with my Modern Jazz Workshop and we have been working on some new tunes so I want to post some thoughts and videos. The first tune we are working on is Question and Answer by Pat Metheny. It’s a ... more

What are your favorites?

During the holiday break, Andrea (our teacher) asked us to learn three blues and three rhythm changes tunes. So to you readers out there, what blues and rhythm changes tunes would you think every jazz musician should know? Post your answers.And happy holidays to all.Steve admin more

More Daahoud

Here is a link to Clifford Brown’s trumpet solo taken from the Clifford Brown Complete EmArcy recordings. Emily Remler’s guitar improvisation on Daahoud (from the CD “East Meets Wes”) is available on iTunes and worth the 99 cents, and you can find a ... more

Jazz Advice

I just finished reading a persuasive article on the blog Jazz Advice (here) entitled, 6 Reasons You Should Start Composing Today. This blog has dozens of useful articles for the budding jazz musician, from mastering chord tones (here) to using the altered scale (here), or how ... more

Solo Entrances

I was browsing through Hal Cook’s How to Improvise (Advance Music, 1991), a great resource for the jazz student, and came across this piece of advice (on p. 18, if you have the book) about starting a solo, which resonated with me and, I thought, maybe would with you: ... more

How high the Moon and Ornithology

Yesterday in class we ran through everything we will perform for our Smalls gig next Sunday. There was great energy and really nice interaction with the band. Our new alto player Kenji, fits right into the group. I especially enjoyed “How high the Moon” and ... more

Dolphin Dance

This week the Bebop Workshop worked on an arrangement of Dolphin Dance that will be played at Small’s, we spent a good hour on it reading all the charts and the second hour we played the rest of the tunes on our repertoire: Night in Tunisia, Donna Lee, You Don’t ... more